The Labour leader of Burnley council has said he will not work with the three members of the far-right British National Party who won seats in Thursday's local elections.

Stuart Caddy's comments came as main political parties took stock of their performances across England, with none claiming outright success.

Vote shares

Conservatives: 34%

Labour 33%

Lib Dem: 27%

Others: 5%

Labour suffered a blow in Middlesbrough where former policeman Ray Mallon, known as 'Robocop', was elected mayor with a massive majority.

And in Peter Mandelson's Hartlepool constituency voters elected their football team's monkey mascot H'Angus - otherwise known as Stuart Drummond - as mayor.

But overall the result left all of the main parties with little to celebrate.

In many ways it was the night of the independents with concerned parents, patients and just plain residents winning seats and - in some cases - power up and down the country.

Turnout

Overall +5%

Postal voting +28%

E-voting +5%

Online voting +1%

No experiment +4%

Labour had the most to lose but in the end the Conservatives, facing their first significant electoral test since Iain Duncan Smith became leader, failed to make anything like the recovery they had hoped for.

Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats won Kingston-upon-Thames and Norwich, but lost control of Richmond and Sheffield.

The BBC's latest projection of each party's share of the vote puts the Conservatives on 34% with Labour on 33% and the Liberal Democrats on 27%.

Turnout, with a handful of results remaining, is forecast to be 35% - which would be the highest for any local election since Labour came to power and up significantly from the 29.6% in 2000.

'Conned'

The BNP's limited success was greeted with alarm by Lord Ouseley, former chairman of the Campaign for Racial Equality, who said it was a "severe chill factor" for the area's community relations.

While Burnley's Labour MP, Peter Pike, said voters had been conned by "racist" candidates.

Labour chairman Charles Clarke said the BNP's success was "disappointing".

He said the party's candidates were only interested in "tearing apart" the communities they targeted.

H'Angus promised free bananas for schoolchildren

But BNP leader Nick Griffin called the result a "triumph".

He denied the party was exploiting racial tension in Northern towns, but he said the BNP's objective remained "an all white Britain".

But the party only fielded 68 candidates when there were almost 6,000 seats contested nationwide.

The Tories gained Adur, Swale, Peterborough and Wokingham, and Enfield, where Michael Portillo lost his seat in 1997.